Charge: Paid caregiver raped severely disabled Renton woman

Police say blind, non-verbal woman raped in her home by Auburn man

Updated 4:05 pm, Thursday, September 3, 2015

A paid caregiver accused of sexually assaulting a severely disabled woman at a Renton group home has been charged with rape.

King County prosecutors claim Samuel K. Njuguna raped the 65-year-old woman on June 30. Njuguna, 20, then left for Las Vegas, where he was found hospitalized after a suicide attempt.

Renton police launched an investigation on June 30 after a worker at the group home found evidence the woman had been sexually assaulted.

Police described the woman as blind, deaf and severely mentally disabled. She has a 100-word vocabulary and can only express herself through hand signals.

The woman had been living at a Renton home shared with two other people with similar disabilities. Staff from Puget Sound Regional Services, a nonprofit care provider, provided 24-hour care to residents there.

The day the apparent assault was discovered, the woman was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Investigators there found evidence of a sexual assault.

According to charging papers, a used condom was recovered from the Renton home. Writing the court, a Renton detective said DNA matching the woman and Njuguna was found on the condom.

Five of the six men working in the home voluntarily gave DNA samples to investigators, the detective said in charging papers. The sixth – Njuguna – declined to do so and left the state for Nevada after learning police were investigating.

Police then obtained a warrant for Njuguna’s DNA. They tracked him to a Las Vegas hospital, where he’d been receiving treatment after trying to kill himself.

Department of Health records show Njuguna has been licensed as a nursing assistant since March 2014. Police say he was working for Puget Sound Regional Services when he allegedly raped the woman.

Njuguna, an Auburn resident, was booked Thursday into the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent. He has been charged with second-degree rape and remains jailed on $200,000 bail.